Table of contents

Microelectronics and the classical information technologies transformed the physics of semiconductors. Photonics has given optical materials a new direction. Quantum information technologies, we believe, will have immense impact on condensed matter physics. The novel systems of quantum information processing need to be designed and made. Their behaviours must be manipulated in ways that are intrinsically quantal and generally nanoscale. Both in this special issue and in previous issues (see e.g., Spiller T P and Munro W J 2006 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter18 V1–10) we see the emergence of new ideas that link the fundamentals of science to the pragmatism of market-led industry. We hope these papers will be followed by many others on quantum information processing in Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter.

Information has long been described by physical structures. The spectacularly successful modern computers use silicon transistors to hold and process information. A number of attempts to repeat the success with other kinds of solid-state devices have failed. The reasons for the unique success of silicon transistors are found in the requirements of computing, the properties of transistors, and the variability in devices manufactured in the large quantities needed to build large computing systems. New challenges will be met in building quantum computers to meet the same requirements.

Electron spins in semiconductor quantum dots are promising candidates for the experimental realization of solid-state qubits. We analyse the dynamics of a system of three qubits arranged in a linear geometry and a system of four qubits arranged in a square geometry. Calculations are performed for several quantum dot confining potentials. In the three-qubit case, three-body effects are identified that have an important quantitative influence upon quantum computation. In the four-qubit case, the full Hamiltonian is found to include both three-body and four-body interactions that significantly influence the dynamics in physically relevant parameter regimes. We consider the implications of these results for the encoded universality paradigm applied to the four-electron qubit code; in particular, we consider what is required to circumvent the four-body effects in an encoded system (four spins per encoded qubit) by the appropriate tuning of experimental parameters.

The discovery of the quantum factorization algorithm more than a decade ago triggered intense interest in exploring possible physical realizations of quantum computers. Among the many solid state proposals, electron and nuclear spins in Si and group IV related materials have long coherence times and the capability of state preparation, gating and read-out using electric, magnetic and optical fields. Proposals involving silicon seek to take advantage of an existing mature technology and the implicit promise of scalability from solid state materials. Nevertheless, building such quantum systems depends in many cases on the development of fabrication techniques with nearly atomic precision. Managing decoherence, initialization and read-out in any quantum computer remains a daunting task. In this review we summarize proposals and recent developments relevant to the possible realization of a quantum computer constructed out of Si (or group IV) materials.

Many quantum gate proposals make physical assumptions to ease analysis. Here we explicitly consider the effect of these assumptions for a particular two-qubit gate proposal, a cube-root-of-unity gate, in which the two qubits are donors in a semiconductor coupled via an intermediate 'control' spin. Our approach considers directly the electronic structures of the qubit and control impurity systems. We find that such gates are highly sensitive to environmental factors overlooked in analytically soluble models, but that there are regimes in which simplifying assumptions are valid and lead to high fidelity gates.

We demonstrate in a solid state quantum gate based on the electronic excitation of a control atom that it is possible to disentangle the control electron, in the presence of an arbitrary magnetic field and exchange interaction. This will allow multiple gates on a single substrate, providing the basis for a solid state quantum computer.

Given the effectiveness of semiconductor devices for classical computation one is naturally led to consider semiconductor systems for solid state quantum information processing. Semiconductors are particularly suitable where local control of electric fields and charge transport are required. Conventional semiconductor electronics is built upon these capabilities and has demonstrated scaling to large complicated arrays of interconnected devices. However, the requirements for a quantum computer are very different from those for classical computation, and it is not immediately obvious how best to build one in a semiconductor. One possible approach is to use spins as qubits: of nuclei, of electrons, or both in combination. Long qubit coherence times are a prerequisite for quantum computing, and in this paper we will discuss measurements of spin coherence in silicon. The results are encouraging—both electrons bound to donors and the donor nuclei exhibit low decoherence under the right circumstances. Doped silicon thus appears to pass the first test on the road to a quantum computer.

In this paper we present a quantum logic circuit which can be used for the experimental demonstration of a three-qubit solid state quantum computer based on a recent proposal of optically driven quantum logic gates. In these gates, the entanglement of randomly placed electron spin qubits is manipulated by optical excitation of control electrons. The circuit we describe solves the Deutsch problem with an improved algorithm called the refined Deutsch–Jozsa algorithm. We show that it is possible to select optical pulses that solve the Deutsch problem correctly, and do so without losing quantum information to the control electrons, even though the gate parameters vary substantially from one gate to another.

Quantum computing is an attractive and multidisciplinary field, which became a focus for experimental and theoretical research during the last decade. Among other systems, such as ions in traps and superconducting circuits, solid state based qubits are considered to be promising candidates for use in first experimental tests of quantum hardware. Here we report recent progress in quantum information processing with point defects in diamond. Qubits are defined as single spin states (electron or nuclear). This allows exploration of long coherence times (up to seconds for nuclear spins at cryogenic temperatures). In addition, the optical transition between ground and excited electronic states allows coupling of spin degrees of freedom to the state of the electromagnetic field. Such coupling gives access to spin state read-out via spin-selective scattering of photons. This also allows the use of spin states as robust memory for flying qubits (photons).

The necessary elements for practical devices exploiting quantum coherence in diamond materials are summarized, and progress towards their realization documented. A brief review of future prospects for diamond-based devices is also provided.

We predict and analyse a novel spin filter in semiconducting carbon nanotubes. By using local electrostatic gates, the conduction and valence bands can be modulated to form a double-barrier structure. The confined region below the valence band defines a Zener quantum dot, which exhibits resonant tunnelling. The resonances split in a magnetic field to make a bipolar spin filter for applications in spintronics and quantum information processing. We model this using envelope function theory and show that this is in excellent agreement with a corresponding tight-binding calculation.

Entanglement can be generated by two electrons in a spin-zero state on a semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube. The two electrons, one weakly bound in a shallow well in the conduction band, and the other injected into the conduction band, are coupled by the Coulomb interaction. Both transmission and entanglement are dependent on the well characteristics, which can be controlled by a local gate, and on the kinetic energy of the injected electron. Regimes with different degrees of electron correlation exhibit full or partial entanglement. In the latter case, the maximum entanglement can be estimated as a function of width and separation of a pair of singlet–triplet resonances.

Molecular structures appear to be natural candidates for a quantum technology: individual atoms can support quantum superpositions for long periods, and such atoms can in principle be embedded in a permanent molecular scaffolding to form an array. This would be true nanotechnology, with dimensions of order of a nanometre. However, the challenges of realizing such a vision are immense. One must identify a suitable elementary unit and demonstrate its merits for qubit storage and manipulation, including input/output. These units must then be formed into large arrays corresponding to an functional quantum architecture, including a mechanism for gate operations. Here we report our efforts, both experimental and theoretical, to create such a technology based on endohedral fullerenes or 'buckyballs'. We describe our successes with respect to these criteria, along with the obstacles we are currently facing and the questions that remain to be addressed.

We have developed semiconductor point contact devices in which nuclear spins in a nanoscale region are coherently controlled by all-electrical methods. Different from the standard nuclear-magnetic resonance technique, the longitudinal magnetization of nuclear spins is directly detected by measuring resistance, resulting in ultra-sensitive detection of the microscopic quantity of nuclear spins. All possible coherent oscillations have been successfully demonstrated between two levels from four nuclear spin states of I = 3/2 nuclei. Quantum information processing is discussed based on two fictitious qubits of an I = 3/2 system and methods are described for performing arbitrary logical gates both on one and two qubits. A scheme for quantum state tomography based on M_z-detection is also proposed. As the starting point of quantum manipulations, we have experimentally prepared the effective pure states for the I = 3/2 nuclear spin system.

We discuss the current situation concerning measurement and readout of Josephson-junction based qubits. In particular, we focus attention on dispersive low-dissipation techniques involving reflection of radiation from an oscillator circuit coupled to a qubit, allowing single-shot determination of the state of the qubit. In particular, we develop a formalism describing a charge qubit read out by measuring its effective (quantum) capacitance. To exemplify, we also give explicit formulas for the readout time.